This lecture explores the birth of the Urban Eden: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park photographic project, and chronicles its evolution from seduction, to field trips, research, the first book mock-ups and now printing the exhibition.

Feedback on our work has proven critical to many of us involved in the arts. In this emerging age of digital photography, it is hard to find people knowledgeable in the technology and with a background and experience in the fine arts.

Ted Orland’s Old Favorites & New Discoveries exhibition runs from October 1 through November 15, 2024. Opening reception this Sunday October 6, 2024 from 1-4 pm. Ted will have signed copies of his book Art And Fear, the last of his Compendium of Photographic Truths poster and original 14x19 prints for the remarkable price of $100.

A seminar on copying/digitizing your film archives with your digital camera. We will do two film copies for each student.

Many of us were photographing and building our archives long before digital photography came along. Andany of us want to bring those older negatives and slides into the digital age for editing and printing. Film scanners are less and less available, and the high quality scanners were expensive. But you already have a digital camera that can be used to very effectively copy your film..

A lecture concentrating digital “sharpening” techniques from Photoshop to my explorations of Topaz Sharpen AI. This is a practical, down to earth lecture meant to enable students to create a greater illusion of focus in their digital images.

Why do some images move us, and others leave us cold? What makes a good photograph? What makes us pick up the camera at a particular moment? How do we work toward understanding our momentary visual curiosities and turn them into strong photographs? Why do we point the camera in one direction instead of another when the subject matter might be very similar? Why does a photographer take so long to make a photograph? What constitutes a beautiful print?

A lecture concentrating digital “sharpening” techniques from Photoshop to my explorations of Topaz Sharpen AI. This is a practical, down to earth lecture meant to enable students to create a greater illusion of focus in their digital images.

A Workshop Guiding Photographers Toward Rendering with Intent and Skill

A half-day virtual workshop concentrating on Raw processing and Photoshop as straightforward photo processing tools rather than instruments of image alteration. It is a great chance to explore digital photographic interpretation with Steve as he demonstrates his use of editing tools, executed with restraint and finesse. This class is designed to break down the steps to really understand the processes, and to work through difficult images.

Our photographic world has been shaped by what we’ve seen of others work, what we believed was possible, and what we’ve seen with our own eyes. Join Steve for this exploration of his influences and affections in this highly personal take on the history of photography through his eyes and photographic life experience.

This workshop is part of a series of classes concentrating on the tools within Photoshop critical to Photographers. It is a great chance to explore digital photographic editing with Steve. Help and demonstrations of his use of editing tools, executed with restraint and finesse, will benefit all of your digital photography work. This class is designed to break down the steps to really understand the processes, and to work through difficult images.

Our color perception of the world is a pervasive influence on our hearts, and our understanding of space and time. Making color photographs can build on those influences or merely record by habit and defaults. Controlling color after the fact can be a real technological challenge. This seminar explores the color we see, the way we record it, and the challenges of displaying, controlling and reproducing it.

Discussions will include making a photograph where color matters, interpreting that color from a Raw capture, fine-tuning that interpretation, building custom camera profiles (and editing them) plus building a color managed workflow from capture to printing.

A lecture concentrating on Raw processing. It is a great chance to explore digital photographic interpretation with Steve as he demonstrates his use of editing tools, executed with restraint and finesse. This class is designed to break down the steps to really understand the processes, and to work through difficult images. Topics Include paying attention to revealing actual data content, methods for pulling the detail out of that data and how that processing connects to Photoshop. Both faithful and interpretive decisions will be explored.

Feedback on our work has proven critical to many of us involved in the arts. In this emerging age of digital photography, it is hard to find people knowledgeable in the technology and with a background and experience in the fine arts.

What makes a good photograph? Why do we point the camera in one direction instead of another when the subject matter might be very similar? Why does a photographer take so damn long to make a photograph? These and other such "compositional" questions will be discussed in this lecture on photographic composition.

There will be no rules of composition propagated here, but explorations and suggestions. A good nuts and bolts evening for improving your photographs. A question and answer period will conclude the evening.

Preservation, Scanning and Restoration of Photographs

This class explores the tools and techniques needed by photographers scanning, restoration and preservation of old photographs. This classic designed for honest restoration, not for filling in huge gaps in missing materials. Various dust scratch removal techniques at scanning and editing of your files will be demonstrated. Some color restoration will be discussed briefly as well as the archiving of your files.

The limitations of digital and film-based photography to capture the extreme highlights and shadows of a scene has been part of the opportunity of the traditional Zone System with film, and heavy tonal adjustments in digital interpretations. But with the ability to accurately combine very different exposures, HDR opens up a whole new world of holding a scene with a camera much more akin to the versatility of our eyes. Join me for this exploration of High Dynamic Range photography from exposure, to integration, and processing. HDR does not have to mean weird extraterrestrial looking photographs, it can be a beautiful melding of technology and technique that makes our photographs much more like our real world experience.